Sean Michael Kerner

Working in the bits and bytes software world of IT security, it’s often easy to forget that the world around us still very much relies on physical security. It’s a reminder I was served this past week when I spent far more time than I care to admit inside the Lockpick and Tamper Evident Villages […]

Many good open-source software tools are freely available for penetration testers (and hackers) for testing the security of WiFi networks and their users. Getting those tools to run on a given computer isn’t always easy, and walking around with a notebook running WiFi penetration tools isn’t exactly the right approach if you’re trying to be […]

Security researchers often walk a very thin line between what is legal and what is illegal, and knowing the difference is not all that easy, especially given the current state of the law. So what do security researchers need to know about the law? Attorney Marcia Hoffman addressed that question during a pair of speaking […]

A security researcher speaking at the Black Hat conference last week has exposed the malicious underworld of Booter services that offers paying customers distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack capabilities on demand. Lance James, chief scientist at Vigilant, explained to eWEEK that he got pulled into an investigation into the world of Booter services by […]

Love them or hate them, passwords are fundamental to the way we interface with the digital world. How many times in recent memory have I read about or reported on, some form of breach at a vendor where passwords were compromised? (short answer: lots). However, just because a set of passwords are stolen or lost […]

Industrial control infrastructure that is used to monitor and manage devices and sensors can be remotely exploited, potentially leading to a cataclysmic failure, according to at least two sets of researchers speaking at the Black Hat security conference this week. Researchers from security firm IOActive detailed their findings in a session provocatively titled “Compromising Industrial […]

This week a the Black Hat Security conference, Security Researcher, Jeff Forristal delivered a talk that detailed precisely what the Android master key vulnerability is all about. As Forristal explained, Google’s Android had multiple vulnerabilities in how the operating system verifies JAR/ZIP/APK files, which run on Android devices. Calling it a master key flaw is […]

Speaking at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology demonstrated how a small Linux ARM device they call a MACTANS could infect Apple iOS devices with a Trojan. The way the attack works is relatively simple. The user’s device is infected with a trojan when he or […]

Alexander emphasized that the NSA can and does audit the actions of its personnel. He refuted media reports that the NSA is collecting everything on everyone as simply not being true. The NSA focuses on programs that go after content that might represent a threat to the U.S., he said. “We have a metadata program […]

LAS VEGAS: There are a lot of rooms at the Black Hat security conference. Off to the side in an unmarked location is the Wi-Fi control room for what is arguably one of the most hostile network environments anywhere on the planet. This year the task of delivering Wi-Fi to the thousands of hackers that […]

LAS VEGAS—Phishing is about to get a whole lot more personal, thanks to ethical hackers at Trustwave. A new tool that is being released at the Black Hat security conference by security researchers from Trustwave aims to improve social engineering attacks with more targeted and convincing spear-phishing messages. The tool uses online activity as a […]

The chief engineer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab shared his wisdom Aug. 1 at the Black Hat security conference here on the key steps and best practices that IT people can take to help insure they innovate successfully. Brian Muirhead is quite literally a rocket scientist who helped lead an era in technology that has […]